Originally Posted by bikenh

I agree. Just because you can ride a bike on the road doesn't mean you should...you might get hit by a car or might have deer run into the side of you(someone I know had that happen to him last fall), etc. Everybody has there own risk tolerance level. Actually mine is probably bigger than most. I have actually been looking for the part two years at building my own bike frame. No company builds what I'm looking for, so I have no other option than to build it myself. Yes, it would be a track end frame made out of wood. Could I ride it...yeah, should I...of course not it doesn't help support corporate America so of course I shouldn't ride it. It would be highly experimental. Totally adjustable frame, everything can be adjusted, in most cases you could adjust it while riding down the road...that way you can change the way bike handles to make it handle the way you want it to handle at the time in question. Should I ride something like that...no. If I just have to figure out how to accomplish everything I want to accomplish and yea I would build it and ride it. I ride all the time with a homemade rear rack and coroplast front fenders. Sure they could hang up on me and cause me trouble, and they have. Does it stop me from riding with them, no.

Nothing in life is safe. You could flip your car upside down and kill yourself as you drive home from work/shopping. Cars/SUVs aren't safe. Do people still drive. Nothing has ever been accomplished without someone taking a risk. You would be living in Richmond, IN if Columbus had sailed the ocean blue. you would still be overseas somewhere.

Off the smartassness. I do realize changing anything is a risk that it might break but I'm willing to take that risk. I know I don't have the money or the space to buy a new bike, nowhere to put it. I also realize that any new bike doesn't meet my requirements so why spend the money on something that doesn't give me what I want. Instead I just try to get closer and closer to what I want with what I have right now by manipulating it in a way that I feel comfortable with the risk involved in how I'm doing the manipulating. The reason I haven't built the bike above is I haven't figured out a way of doing it that I feel comfortable with the idea of riding it. I haven't stumbled into certain things out there that jumps out at me and screams...this is the way to do it. Everything probably exists but I just don't know about it yet/don't have easy access to it without spending a ton of money that I don't have to start with. As a result the idea of the bike is still on paper only and not on the road.